Notes: My big thank you goes to my wonderful beta Lucid Nightmare!
I want to thank all the wonderful people who like this story and read it even though my updates are rather slow. Thank you so much. It makes me so happy to read your reviews! :)
I'm not that happy with how this part ends, but no matter how I tried, I just couldn't find better words to write it down. Please, bear in mind that English is not even my second, but third language, okie? :)
On the Run Part 4
"By the gods, what's going on here?" Treize asked, his voice full of shock as his gaze took in the braided boy on the floor, the unknown blue-eyed man holding a hunting knife to Tosten's throat and his mate tied to the bed with ropes. Before he could do or say anything more, the healer who was standing by his side rushed into the room and to the fallen boy.
"Are you okay?" Trowa asked, kneeling down on the floor by the lifebearer's side. He reached out and touched Duo's pale face, checking his temperature and sighing with relief when only slight warmth met his touch.
Duo's eyes fluttered open and he looked up at the brown-haired young man from his curled up position on the hardwood floor. "Don't know..." he admitted. "Cramp... in my stomach..."
Trowa frowned. "Didn't I tell you to not get out of bed?" he chided the lifebearer sternly.
At the same moment, the shocked stupor finally left Treize's body and he entered the room, quickly crossing the distance that parted him from his mate. His face blanched and eyes filled with horror as he noticed the bloodied wounds where the coarse ropes tore Mil's skin. "Gods..." he whispered, pulling his knife out of the sheath at his belt and quickly cutting the restraints.
Finally able to move, Mil curled up at his side, clutching his swollen belly with his arms, eyes squeezed tight. He moaned and shuddered as another contraction ripped through his body.
Treize stroked the sweat-soaked blond hair. Feeling his mate shiver, his eyes filled with rage. He turned to Tosten. "What have you done?! You bastard!" In two long strides, he reached the now pale looking Tosten and tore him out of Heero's arms. If the Enforcer hadn't moved his hand away quickly enough, he would have cut the midwife's throat.
Treize bunched the front of Tosten's shirt in his fist and threw the man against the wall with a loud thump. "What were you doing here? What do you have to say for yourself?" he screamed, the fury about what happened to his mate filling him with a violent rage.
Before Tosten could open his mouth, Trowa spoke, disgust evident in his voice. "He is a traditionalist," he explained.
Heero, who tucked his knife away and decided to let the aristocrat handle the inn owner's mate, crouched next to the healer. "What does that mean?" he asked, gently, carefully helping Duo sit up so that he could take him in his arms and return to their room. Lying on the cold floor didn't do the lifebearer any good.
As the Enforcer lifted his mate in his arms and stood up, Trowa got up with him. "They are convinced that the pain of birth is a punishment sent on the lifebearer by the gods. They regard the lifebearers as tainted flesh, seducers, as nothing more than a womb for bearing a child. Their traditions say that a lifebearer should not get any help while bearing a child. If the gods want the baby to be born, it will be born and if the child or the lifebearer die in the process, it's the gods' will, too."
Duo, who was now safely snuggled in the strong arms of his mate, opened his eyes and looked at his friend with shock written on his features. "That's.... that's nuts!" he whispered, horrified. "We are not animals to be bred and left to our fate!" His face contorted as the prospect made him feel slightly nauseous. "How could you do that? You're one of us, too!"
Tosten, who until now struggled in the aristocrat's tight grip, stopped his efforts to free himself and looked at Duo over Treize's shoulder. "Sinful flesh," he spat out, loathing filling his voice. "All lifebearers will end in the underworld and will know nothing of god's mercy."
All the men, save for Mil, looked at Tosten with disbelief in their eyes. Then Treize dragged him to the open door, and threw him out of the room onto the cold floor of the dark corridor. "Get out of my sight!" he snapped at him in rage. "And don't you dare come anywhere near my mate again!"
The small man nodded, then scrambled away quickly.
"It's unbelievable that such things still exist among our people," Treize whispered, then turned to the other occupants of the room. "Who knows how many innocent lifebearers died in this village because of that close-minded madman."
The grim silence that fell upon the room got interrupted by a painful moan escaping the huddled figure on the bed. The aristocrat immediately rushed to his mate, kneeling on the floor by the bed.
Trowa looked undecidedly from one lifebearer to the other. Both needed his attention. Duo might have been hurt worse, and the pregnant one...
Seeing the healer's dilemma, Duo whispered. "Stay with him. I will be fine. Heero will take good care of me, you'll see." Then the braided lifebearer closed his eyes and let his head fall back to his mate's shoulder exhaustedly.
Trowa looked the Enforcer in the eyes and Heero nodded. "Duo is due for another dose of your medicine. Even if you could give him your attention, you probably would not be able to do anything more. But here, you can do something. That lifebearer has been through a lot already and he needs your knowledge to bring that child into the world. There is no one here who could help him, besides you."
The healer took a heavy sigh, then touched Duo's cheek again, pushing the brown bangs from the lifebearer's forehead. "You stay in bed, do you hear me? No more walking around and getting in trouble, okay?" He said it with a small smile to try and lift Duo's obviously crushed mood.
The braided boy opened his eyes and returned the smile with some effort. "Okay." But then his eyes slid to the moaning, shuddering figure on the bed and the smile disappeared. "Can you take me to our room now, Heero?" he asked quietly, closing his eyes.
The Enforcer frowned, obviously not liking the depressed mood that radiated from his mate. Giving Trowa one last glance, he headed for the door. The healer followed him, closing the door behind him silently.
~*~
"Why did you get up?" Heero asked as he lowered his mate on the bed gently.
Duo sighed, his eyes still closed. Without protest, he endured Heero lifting his gown to check the padding. He was over the embarrassment such intimate things would have caused him a couple of months ago. Now he regarded it as another necessity for his recovery. He would be happier, if Heero touched him down there for a completely different reason though. That thought did manage to bring a bright flush to his cheeks and he almost hid his burning face in his hands.
Heero grunted, obviously satisfied. "Obviously, no damage was done. The bleeding is nearly stopped, too," he said, lowering the gown back in place and covering Duo with warm blankets. "You didn't answer my question. Why did you get up?"
The lifebearer sighed again. It was obvious that Heero would not let it go. Duo looked at the taller man, then moved his eyes to the side. "I heard him moaning and crying. I had to do something about it. I couldn't just lie here and listen to it."
Heero straightened and crossed his arms on his chest. "And why didn't you wait for me? You know that I wouldn't leave you alone for a long time. I would've been back soon."
At first Duo only shrugged, but when the Enforcer still waited for his answer patiently, he reluctantly continued. "It... hurt to listen to him. It was as if someone was driving a knife through my heart and soul. And not only that... I..." His voice trailed off and he clamped his mouth shut as if realizing that he had almost revealed something he didn't want to.
But Heero wouldn't leave it be. Obviously, something was bothering Duo. "You...?"
Duo swallowed and lowered his sight as if not daring to look him in the eyes. "I... ached...inside." With that, he lifted his hand and touched his abdomen which was flat now, but had been throbbing with life just months ago. "It was as if my whole being knew that there was another lifebearer expecting here and it longed for being filled with life again..."
Heero frowned. His heart clenched in the face of Duo's pain and the longing in his voice. He didn't know how to comfort him, he was not good with such things and so the answer took him probably longer than it should have for suddenly, Duo's eyes snapped open and he looked directly at the Enforcer.
"How can you still want me?" The self-loathing was fairly evident in his voice. "I'm damaged goods. I could not even carry a child to term. The child you were forced to claim as yours. And then the whole thing with Howard-" he shuddered at the thought of the old man he used to love as an uncle "-and my bleeding. Who knows if I will ever be able to have children again. I'm more trouble than I'm worth." His voice dropped and he lifted his hands and hid his face behind them.
Heero shuffled his feet once, twice, not knowing what to do. Then with a sigh, he sat down on the bed and sitting Duo up carefully, he took him in his arms. "That's not true," he said, as he squeezed his mate gently. "I won't listen to you demeaning yourself. You're the best thing that ever happened to me. I've loved you for years and I will never leave you, for anything in the world. Do you hear me?"
Duo laid his head in the crook of Heero's neck, relaxing slightly, feeling the pain slowly leave his body. He closed his arms around the Enforcer and brought himself even closer. Then he nodded in answer to Heero's question. Maybe if his mate would repeat it often enough, he would learn to believe it in the end.
"And it doesn't matter for me if you will or will not be able to have children. I do want to have kids, but your kids, not just kids. And if it's not possible - and there is the big if - there are enough children out there who don't have anybody." Heero caressed Duo's back, feeling the warmth of his skin through the thin cloth.
The lifebearer blinked, then straightened and looked his mate in the eyes. "You... you wouldn't mind taking in a child that's not yours?" he whispered, clearly shocked. It was highly unusual for a Sire to take care of a baby that was not his. But on the other hand... Heero took him in even though he expected Wufei's child and even claimed it as his own in front of the whole village, so... maybe...just maybe he really wouldn't mind...
Heero smiled one of his rare smiles, then pushed the long bangs away from the lifebearer's forehead. "Of course not. But let's not worry about that now, okay? First, you have to get better."
Duo nodded, then nuzzled his cheek against the Enforcer's warm hand. "And we didn't even kiss properly yet," he sighed mournfully.
Before the braided young man could blink, Heero lowered his head and touched the lifebearer's warm lips with his own. It was a gentle kiss that didn't demand or force. Their lips moved against each other in the sweetest of touches that left Duo breathless, and feeling butterflies flapping their wings in his stomach.
When they finally parted, Duo sighed and laid his head back in the crook of Heero's neck. Feeling the Enforcer's heart beat just as wildly as his own, he sighed happily, then closed his eyes. "Can we do that again soon? I think we need more practice."
If the lifebearer didn't know better, he would have said that the Enforcer choked down a laugh.
~*~
It was a couple of minutes later when Heero slowly descended the stairs to the inn's main room. Trowa was helping with the birth and Duo was nodding off in their room. And since it was time for the lifebearer's medicine, Heero decided to finally fetch the broth they needed and ask someone to bring hot water to the aristocrat's room. The Enforcer didn't know much about births, but one thing he did know for sure: they were messy. Trowa would soon be in need of water to... do what he needed to do.
Stepping into the main room, he looked around. There were fifteen, maybe twenty men sitting around the room, looking grave. The soldiers Trowa helped to rescue. He didn't even have the time to ask how it went. But from the grim expressions on the men's faces, it was obvious that not all of them got rescued.
While walking through the rows of tables and heading for the bar where the short, sour looking lifebearer - Tosten - was sitting, he kept looking around, trying to find his dog, Shinigami. Seeing him nowhere, he stopped by one of the older looking soldiers.
"I'm sorry, sir, but..."
The man lifted up his weary face. "Yes, young man?"
"Have you seen my dog? Big, black..." Heero didn't actually know how to describe the beast that was his dog. Dangerous looking?
The older man smiled tiredly. "You mean Shinigami? He brought His Highness and the healer to us. He helped us find some of the men who were still breathing, but then..." The man frowned. "I think he ran away. I remember the healer calling his name, but he kept running."
Heero sighed. Well, Shinigami wasn't a puppy, he knew how to take care of himself. Thanking the man, he continued toward the bar.
Tosten didn't look pleased with his request to heat up some broth for him and bring water for the healer to use. But seeing Heero's stern look, he got up from his chair to go to the kitchen. But before he could take more than two steps, the Enforcer caught him by the front side of his black tunic and pulled him close over the bar.
"And don't you dare mix something in it that could cause any of the lifebearers any harm," Heero hissed, his eyes glinting dangerously. "If you do, I swear that I will pour it down your throat!"
Tosten blanched, swallowed, then scurried off quickly glad to be out of sight.
Waiting for the broth, Heero turned around and leaned against the bar. He crossed his arms over his chest and let his eyes wander around the room again. That was when Warrick walked out of the kitchen, looked around nervously, then moved to the nearest window.
The shutters were open and the first rays of daylight were peeking through the thick glass of the window panes. Obviously, the storm was over and the wind quieted down, too. Warrick stepped to the window and looked out, licking his lips nervously. Obviously not seeing what he desired, he moved around the room, looking out of every window and getting more and more nervous with each step.
When he finally arrived at the bar again, Heero, who had been watching his progress through the room with a frown on his face asked with mild curiosity. "Are you awaiting someone?"
The bartender almost jumped out of his skin. He looked at the Enforcer, then to the nearest window and back. "Err... no, I was just..." He shuffled his feet and Heero noticed that beads of sweat appeared on his forehead and the upper lip. The Enforcer narrowed his eyes.
Before Warrick could say more and Heero ask more, there was a scratching sound at the door. The room fell even more silent and everybody turned to the doorway. Then one of the soldiers, sitting closest to the door, got up and opened it cautiously.
Shinigami darted in through the narrow passage of the open door. He stopped in the middle of the room, and unaware of having the attention of every occupant in the room, he shook the wet remnants of snow out of his black fur. Then finally noticing his master, he happily dashed to him, wagging his tail.
Heero frowned at the beast. "Where have you been?" he asked sternly, but the dog didn't seem worried about his master being angry with him. The Enforcer sighed in resignation, and touched Shinigami's head to scratch him behind the ears.
Almost immediately, though, the Enforcer froze. He lifted his hand from Shinigami's midnight fur and looked at it. His palm was red with blood.
TBC...
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